For Christmas a Playstation 2 Eye toy entered the home, and it's a pretty neat little toy when hooked to the PS2. However, it turns out that it's also a dirt cheap, high quality camera compatible with the PC after a bit of hacking!

Here's how to turn your EyeToy camera into a webcam compatible with Skype, MSN Messenger etc. I just did this, and you can too:

Then search for
DeviceDesc="D-Link VGA Webcam"
and replace the contents between the quotes with "Eye Toy". This is only in one place.

Save the file using the same name. You might have to unset the read-only bit on the file first. (Right click the file name, select Properties and uncheck the checkbox saying Read Only):

Connect your Eye Toy to your USB port. Windows will ask you for the driver. Don't let it connect to Windows Update (you won't find anything there of interest anyway), but point it to the folder you chose in the step above. Windows automatically installs the required drivers and you're now all set!!

You can test your new webcam by running for example Skype or MSN Messenger and do webcam setup there!

My very initial testing of the EyeToy Namtai shows that it is capable of a resolution of 640x480 pixels and the default colour balance, framerate etc seems very good..

Update: for your ease of use, I have uploaded a set of drivers for both the eyetoy versions (Namtai & Logitech) here: ftp://ftp.jacobsen.no/pub/drivers/eyetoy/ - download the one that fits your camera, unzip and point the Windows new hardware wizard to the directory where you put the files.

thanx a lot did not know that i could use this as web cam for my niece. bought her the eye toy for for b-day and games for xmas. was looking for other games b/c they love so much. thought this was awesome...thanx again now she thinks i am a computer wiz.